The Hours of Great Friday (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Unnailing,” egg tempera, 1932, Holy Church of Pantanassa, Monastiraki.

The Hours of Great Friday

By Photios Kontoglou

“It was astonishing to behold the Maker of heaven and earth hanging upon a Cross.”

Today, on Great Friday in the morning, they say the Hours in the church. In whatever church one may happen to be, it is good, but whoever happens to be in some monastery or in some deserted chapel, he can say that he truly felt compunction.

The Hours do not have much chanting; most of the texts are read. At the beginning they read from the Psalter three psalms: “Give ear to my words, O Lord; understand my cry,” “Why did the nations rage and the peoples meditate empty things?” “O God, my God, attend to me; why have You forsaken me?” Then they chant two or three troparia, beginning from this: “Today the veil of the temple is rent for a reproof of the lawless, and the sun hides its own rays, seeing the Master being crucified.” And after the priest says the Gospel, they begin again the reading. How well these readings are chosen — the psalms, the prophecies, and the other readings of Holy Scripture!

At the time when the chanters chant and the readers read, you see on the arches painted those things which they chant and those which they read. And you think that the words are one with the images, which are made from fasting hands. You hear the priests chanting the troparion:

The Crucifixion (Photios Kontoglou)

“The Crucifixion,” fresco of the side-chapel of Saint Irene, of the Pesmazoglou family, Kifisia.

The Crucifixion 

By Photios Kontoglou

The night that they seized Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, His disciples from their fear scattered and left Him alone in the hands of the lawless, so that the prophecy might come true: “They will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.”

The evildoers therefore bound Christ and led Him to the high priest Caiaphas, and there the scribes and the elders were gathered together. Peter was following to see the end. Meanwhile the Pharisees were seeking to find false witnesses in order to put Christ to death. And some were found who said that they heard Him saying that I will destroy the Temple of Solomon and in three days I will build it without stones. Caiaphas stood up and said to Christ: “Do you not answer? What do these testify against you?” And He was silent. The High Priest says to Him again: “Are you the Christ, the Son of God?” And Christ answered him: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming upon clouds.” Then Caiaphas said: “What need do we have of witnesses? You heard that He blasphemed.” And the others cried out that He is guilty and to be put to death. And they took Him and spat on Him and struck Him and said to Him: “Prophesy to us.”

Homily on the Honorable Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (Theophanes Kerameus)

On the Honorable Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ 

Homily 27

By Theophanes Kerameus

Perhaps indeed I may seem burdensome to your love, and wearisome, because to you who have labored through the whole night in standing and psalmody I bring, as a burden, the hearing of teaching. But forgive me, since I am insatiable toward your progress; and stretch your eagerness, that you may gain more. For if the God-hating Jews kept vigil through the whole night in order to seize and crucify the Lord, how shall we not keep watch, that we may learn the purpose of the sacred Gospels which have been sung to us and read? Therefore, having shaken off all listlessness from the soul, give heed to what is being said.

And when the Savior had furnished the sacred guests of the Secret Supper, having Himself ministered and set Himself before them as food, He goes out with them to the Mount of Olives, neither avoiding the Passion (for how could He who both foreknew and foretold and was able to escape suffering do so?), nor yet going of His own accord to the murderers; for the former would have been a dissolution of the dispensation and a kind of ignoble cowardice, while the latter would have furnished a pretext to the abominable ones, as though they had not sinned in killing Him who willingly gave Himself up and almost seized the Passion. At the same time He becomes for us also a model of true courage, being seen superior both to cowardice and to rashness, and teaching through Himself neither to rush headlong toward temptations, nor, when they come upon us, to be ignobly terrified.

Song for Great Friday (Monk Moses the Athonite)

 Song for Great Friday 

 

By Monk Moses the Athonite

 

Great Friday

Always on Great Friday
be alone like Christ,
awaiting the final nail, the vinegar, the spear.

Hear the casting of lots without disturbance
as they divide your possessions—
the blasphemies, the provocations, the indifference.

Without Friday, Sunday does not come;
then you forget the sufferings of the roads
of the Great Friday of our life.

Poem For Great Friday (Elder Basil of Kavsokalyva)

Poem For Great Friday

By Elder Basil of Kavsokalyva

TODAY THE SKY IS BLACK

Today the sky is black,
today the day is dark;
today the lawless ones
have taken counsel—

to crucify the Christ,
the King of all;
and they have given order
to the smith for nails.

“Come, smith,
forge the nails—
make three sharp spikes!”
But that lawless man
goes and fashions five.

Prologue in Sermons: April 10

On Obedience

April 10

(A Word from the Paterikon on Obedience)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Why is it, brethren, that the virtue of obedience is placed above many other virtues? What is the reason for this?

One of the elders said: he who abides in obedience receives a greater reward than the one who, by his own will, is saved in the desert. And he added that another of the elders was shown the places where the saints rest after death. There in one glorious place he saw a man, and it was revealed to him that this man, when he lived, was constantly ill, but in his illness he did not complain, but glorified God. In another place he saw another man, and it was said to him that this one is blessed because in life he was hospitable and received strangers into his house and gave them rest. In a third place he saw yet another man, who was blessed because he spent his whole life in the desert, not seeing the face of a man. Finally, in one especially glorious place he saw a man who, in the degree of his blessedness, was above all and wore a golden collar on his neck. “For what?” asked the one who beheld the vision. The one who was blessed for patience in illness said to him: “For this reason he is exalted above all, that the others did good deeds by their own will, but this one wholly subjected his will to the will of God and to the will of his spiritual father, and spent his whole life in obedience. For this he also received greater glory than all.”

Judas in Orthodox Hymnography (Fr. George Metallinos)

 

 

Judas in Orthodox Hymnography 

 

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos

The figure of Judas is a protagonist in the hymnography of Holy Week. His treacherous attitude is contrasted with the repentant attitude of the “sinful woman" and the confession of love from the thief. The passion of avarice is the main motive for his betrayal of his teacher. A "painful death" becomes the real reward of Judas.

1. Judas in the Hymns of Holy Week

The figure of Judas has occupied Art in all its forms. The same goes for Orthodox hymnography,1 which dissects the Gospel narrative around his person in a vivid and penetrating way. Hymnography constitutes the heart of Orthodox ecclesiastical worship,2 and was the most important poetic creation of Byzantium/Romania.3 In fact, the possibilities offered by poetic discourse make Hymnography the most suitable means for the continuous mystagogy of the ecclesiastical pleroma, with a discourse that is delightful, wrapped in the modest and attractive garment of the ecclesiastical melody.4 The pleroma, listening to or even participating in the chanting of the hymns, experiences and confesses the faith by "weaving from words a melody to the Word."5 Through the poetry of hymns, the worship of Orthodoxy becomes its enduring mouth. The hagiographic and patristic discourse thus becomes the daily song of God's people, who sing their faith and confess it.

The Holy Fathers and Mothers, who compose the hymns, offer through them the theology and theognosis of their hearts purified and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, dipping their pen in the stream of their faith and the tears of their repentance. A mention of the works attributed to Saint Dionysius the Areopagite is important. The poetry and music of Orthodox worship - we read - constitute an "echo" of the heavenly hymnody, which the holy hymnographer (and not just a "poet") hears with his spiritual ears and conveys with the created means available to him in earthly worship. The hymns of the Church are thus understood as a copy of the heavenly "archetype."6 It is not surprising, therefore, that the poetic creations of proven saints, who are also authentic theologians of the Church, enter Orthodox worship.7

Love of Money: The Heavy Sickness of the Soul (Photios Kontoglou)

Love of Money: The Heavy Sickness of the Soul 

By Photios Kontoglou

“Make for yourselves money-bags that do not grow old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens, where no thief comes near” (Luke 12:33)

“The love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim. 6:10)

Of all the sicknesses that afflict the human soul, the most disgusting, in my judgment, is love of money, stinginess. From a young age I detested it. And now, although with age I have changed my mind about many things, about stinginess I have not changed. I would rather deal even with a murderer than with a miser. For the murderer may have killed in a surge of soul, in anger, and later repented, whereas the miser is a cold calculator, rotten to the bone. In the murderer you may find some feelings; in the miser you will find none. The miser is of course always selfish, loving only himself, but many times he is a monster worse even than the selfish man, because he may not even love himself, and may let himself die of hunger.

With this, man shows how he can fall into a condition that no other animal reaches. Only he, who called himself “king of the animals,” arrives at such disgusting foolishness that, out of his stinginess, he hides his money in the mattress or the pillow and dies of hunger. Have you ever seen a stingy dog? Or a donkey that has plenty of hay to eat and yet does not touch it, and is found dead from hunger? You see how the miser becomes mad, and indeed the most unpleasant, the most repulsive kind of madman.

Approaching, Receiving and Remaining With the Lord (Great Thursday) - Fr. George Dorbarakis

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

On Great Thursday, our Fathers have handed down to us to celebrate four things: the Sacred Washing of the Feet, the Secret Supper, the Preternatural Prayer, and also the Betrayal of Judas. That hymn which summarizes and connects most of these, highlighting their implications for our own life as well, is especially the Oikos of the Kontakion of Matins of the day:

“At the secret table, approaching with fear, let us all receive the bread with pure souls, remaining with the Master, that we may see how He washes the feet of the disciples and wipes them with a towel, and that we may do likewise as we have seen, submitting to one another and washing one another’s feet. For Christ Himself thus commanded His disciples, as He said beforehand. But Judas, the servant and deceitful one, did not listen.”

1. “Let us all receive the bread”: The Hymnographer, expressing the faith of the Church, calls us to approach the Secret Table in order to partake of the Immaculate Mysteries. We stand before the center of our church, the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, which the Lord Himself established precisely on this day, at the Secret Supper. The Lord at this Supper celebrated for the first time on earth the Divine Liturgy, calling His disciples to eat His holy Body and to drink His precious Blood. “Take, eat, this is My Body” and “Drink of it, all of you, this is My Blood” are the founding words of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, which from then until now are repeated at every gathering of the faithful, according to the command of the Lord, “Do this in remembrance of Me,” thus perpetuating in the Spirit the Secret Supper itself. The Divine Liturgy is thus understood by our Church as the continuation of the Secret Supper; for this reason it has always been regarded as the center of the Church, around which all the other mysteries are woven. And this is, we could say, natural: the Lord, who came into the world and saved us — in the sense that He united us to Himself and thus reconciled us with God, something that becomes active for the believer from the moment of baptism and chrismation in the name of the Triune God — He Himself nourishes us with His Body and Blood, so that this relationship with Him may be preserved and grow “until we all attain to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”